Hue Bulb Connectivity

How to Connect and Reconnect Hue bulbs

Philips Hue bulbs have a few requirements to get them connected to your bridge.

Bulbs must be within 40 to 60 feet of the bridge. This number can be smaller with interference from walls and other wireless devices. The bulbs do act as repeaters meaning they will chain together if you keep the bulbs within about 20 feet of each other, giving you more distance. The Philips Hue bulbs are indoors only, so if you are using them outside you may run into greater connection issues.

The bulb must be powered on for it to connect to the bridge. It also helps to power off all other Hue lights when trying to add a new bulb to an existing Bridge.

Open Setting in your Hue App and Select Light Setup

Select the plus sign on the bottom right

If this is a new light, try pressing Search and it will scan for your light

Make certain your bulb is powered on and within range of the bridge while searching, It can take up to 1 minute to finish searching for your bulb and will continue searching after it has found it. Your bulb should flash to show its been found and it will show up on your lights list.

If you Bulb was Not Found

All of your Philips Hue bulbs has a serial number printed on the side of the base, they are not printed on the box. There is an Manual search option just under the Auto Search option in Settings/My Lights.

All Philips Hue Serials are a total of 6 characters/numbers

Serial Number Locations:

All Hue Bulbs – Printed on the side of the bulb, it will say Serial No.

Bloom – Silver label on the bottom of the stand

Iris – Silver label on bottom

Hue Go – is on a sticker near the power jack

Hue Lightstrip – On the Zigbee rectangular box along the cord, not the power brick

Instead of Search press Add Serial number and press Search

Example of the serial number on a Hue A19 White & Color bulb

If your Bulb still Didn’t Connect

The last step to try if your hue bulb or light still does not connect is Lamp Finder. This is a MAC or Windows 7/8 Java application that does better at connecting hue lights. Follow the link below to get your lights connected.